This shouldn't even have to be said, but apparently it does so I'll do my best to make it as unambiguous as possible.
I don't care if Michael Brown was a thief. I don't care if he was a cannibal who ate his siblings, put babies on spikes and had just come from bathing in the blood of a hundred virgins. I don't care.
It doesn't matter.
It's not supposed to matter.
What matters is that he was unarmed and appears to have been surrendering when he was shot.
Everything else is just smoke.
More below the fold.
We have a judicial system. It's supposed to include the presumption of innocence and the opportunity to mount a defense. If Michael Brown had committed a crime he was still entitled to due process of law. Whatever the crime. I'm not going to sit here and play "well it was only theft" or "he was only 18" or whatever because that only goes to justify the idea that if you are suspected of a crime you can be shot - if the crime is severe enough and if you are not a teenager - in the street without due process.
The quality of Michael Brown's character is immaterial here. His guilt or innocence in a robbery is immaterial here. The only material issue is whether or not he was aggressive at the time he was shot.
If we go the other route we cede our right to trial, our right to a defense, our right to presumption of innocence to the discretion of police who can then shoot us on sight if they suspect we have committed some crime. We cede any veneer of civility. We cede the foundation of our laws.
The police have released this robbery theory to distract the public from the single important issue - an unarmed man was shot, probably while surrendering. People all over the country have fallen into debating whether Brown was guilty or not, whether being guilty justifies it or not and by letting ourselves have that debate we've given the Ferguson PD exactly what they wanted when they released the tape - a chance to change the topic.
So I'll say it again for good measure. I don't care what Michael Brown may or may not have been guilty of. He could be as drenched in blood as Osama bin Laden for all I care and if he was surrendering when he was shot then he was murdered. Full stop